Born into a ZaydiShi'a Muslim family, ash-Shawkani later on adopted the ideology within Sunni Islam and called for a return to the textual sources of the Quran and hadith. As a result, he opposed much of the Zaydi doctrine.[4] He also opposed Sufism.[5] He is considered as a mujtahid, or authority to whom others in the Muslim community have to defer in details of religious law. Of his work issuing fatwas, ash-Shawkani stated "I acquired knowledge without a price and I wanted to give it thus."[6] Part of the fatwa-issuing work of many noted scholars typically is devoted to the giving of ordinary opinions to private questioners. Ash-Shawkani refers both to his major fatwas, which were collected and preserved as a book, and to his "shorter" fatwas, which he said "could never be counted" and which were not recorded.[7]

He is credited with developing a series of syllabi for attaining various ranks of scholarship and used a strict system of legal analysis based on Sunni thought. He insisted that any jurist who wanted to be a mujtahid fī'l-madhhab (a scholar who is qualified to exercise ijtihad within a school of Islamic law), was required to do ijtihad, which stemmed from his opposition to taqlid for a mujtahid, which he deemed to be a vice with which the Shariah had been inflicted.[8]

Salafis in Saada, would later claim ash-Shawkani as an intellectual precursor, and future Yemeni regimes would uphold his Sunnization policies as a unifier of the country[9] and to undermine Zaydi Shi'ism.[10]

^Farhad Daftary (2 Dec 2013). A History of Shi'i Islam (revised ed.). I.B.Tauris. ISBN9780857735249. In his view, Zaydi theological and legal teachings had no basis in revelation but reflected the unsubstantiated opinions of the Zaydi imams and therefore had to be rejected.|accessdate= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: Extra text (link)

^Farhad Daftary (2 Dec 2013). A History of Shi'i Islam (revised ed.). I.B.Tauris. ISBN9780857735249. Since 1962, republicans in Yaman have continuously used al-Shawkani's teachings and works to undermine the past doctrines of the Zaydi imamate and Zaydi Shi'ism itself. The modern Yamani state has indeed pursued an anti-Zaydi policy in the guise of Islamic reform, drawing extensively on al-Shawkani's teachings.|accessdate= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: Extra text (link)